Roadmapping Switching to Linux Phones

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I am dusting off my studies of Android in response to happenings around the family. Let’s get started.

Phones and Privacy

This round started with my father’s phone screen burning out. He got it repaired, but my sister’s phone screen was cracked, and I ended up giving her my otherwise unused one of the same model.

Consumer privacy has been an increasingly important question as computers integrate more tightly with our everyday lives. We now live in a time and place where most everyone old enough to read is coerced by convenience into loading themselves down with every tracker known to Man unless restrained by applicable law. And this issue will only continue to grow as technologies such as consumer VR and clinically installable neural interfaces mature and facilitate the collection of ever more intimate personal data. Legislation isn’t keeping up, but a minority of people unsatisfied with this status quo are developing open source alternatives that either let end-users mitigate abuse of technology by obfuscating their data or preventing its collection entirely.

My goal is to one day have the family on Linux phones. OK, what are the main obstacles? From previous research, cell network compatibility has been big, but support from our current carrier is nil the moment I read off my prototype PinePhone’s IMEI number (an individual cell modem identifier). Additional general knowledge research turned up that banking apps have a tendency to really hate working on Android devices without Google’s seal of approval.

Phone Carriers

Most major cell companies will prefer you buy a phone on credit that’s been locked to their network for a couple years. Per contract, you don’t get admin privileges until it’s paid off and unlocked – assuming you still have a unit at the end. Even if a service has a bring-your-own-phone program, it may be limited to a short list of models, even if your unapproved unit is compatible with the wireless technology[ies] their network is built on (which I believe was the case last time we switched carriers). Even then, a phone may only be compatible between any combination of calls, texting, data, or other wireless functionalities.

Complicating the matter for me specifically, I cannot even comfortably look at pictures where a part of the screen has been sacrificed for a camera “island” per the modern trend. I need a phone with like goodies in the bezel where they belong. After doing some research, I narrowed my choices down to the Librem 5 and the PinePhone Pro. General research on each for this week turned up year-old criticism about the American made Librem 5 refunds to weigh against the PinePhone being assembled in China like most other personal devices. I looked up each and found a compatibility chart for each and made a better informed recommendation to my parents for when we switch carriers.

Android On Linux

One high priority feature my parents are after in their phones is mobile deposit. That’s not happening on a week’s notice, even if I had a phone already to try it on. From a software point of view though, a Linux desktop is essentially identical to a Linux phone minus a cellular modem, SIM card, and miscellaneous other peripherals.

Many tools exist specifically to run Android apps on desktop. This week, I explored running BlissOS custom ROM on QEMU/KVM. QEMU and KVM took a while to straighten out, so I might be mistaken here, but QEMU is an emulator/hypervisor and KVM is a Linux kernel module for virtualization QEMU can optionally use for direct access to hardware for improved performance. Along the way, I was recommended in the direction of using an AMD graphics card instead of Nvidia. That meant using Derpy Chips, a computer from before Intel came up with the special circuitry needed for this kind of virtualization…

…Well, it looks like I’ve been carrying some bad info around, because this virtualization circuitry has been around for a lot longer than I thought! I navigated Derpy’s BIOS (Yeah, I know I’ve made a stink about them being UEFI and not BIOS, but they’re labeled BIOS despite being UEFI.) to turn on virtualization and and I got a proof of concept going. I tried using its command line installer, but couldn’t figure out how to work anything related to the hard drive. I could consistently get to –I assume– a live session run directly off the disk image. I successfully accessed the Internet from within the VM, but installing apps or even trying to make an entry on the file system remains an unsolved issue. Nevertheless: this is major progress.

Takeaway

Android at its core was made open source by Google to catch up to the iPhone. Now that it’s ahead, they’ve had seasons of moving as much of the definitive experience out of the public eye, but that’s not kept people from making custom ROM’s. While my next major goal in this project is to install an app, the another blockade on my developing road map is SafetyNet. When I get there, I’ll want to look up Magisk and Shamiko, two names I came across pertaining to the Android custom ROM community.

I’ll also note that I still have additional options to try, like something based on containerization. While writing this up, I took a second look at WayDroid, which I dismissed assuming it wouldn’t work in an X11 environment, and it just might.

Final Question

Do you have any experience with Linux phones? I would be most interested in hearing from you in the comments below or on my Socials!

I Choose AnySoftKeyboard as My Android Keyboard.

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I’m finalizing my decision on an Android Keyboard. Let’s get started!

AnySoftKeyboard (ASK) is not the perfect keyboard for me. As I stated last week, the default (Googled) keyboard that came with my tablet is my control test for user experience. The only visible features I find it lacking are up/down keys and a dark mode. ASK offers both of these, but offers additional features I need to grow into.

Unlike other keyboards I tried, ASK is especially flexible if you don’t move on before you’ve explored the depths of its settings app. Buried within its confines are a number of prebuilt top and bottom key rows – around a dozen each. The most unintuitive feature for me was a list of swipe gestures I could safely ignore if it wasn’t key for switching keyboards on-the-fly. I even found a “developer mode” with 41 different types of text fields to test how the keyboard behaves.

My biggest standing complaint with ASK is the confusion over exactly what is a “language.” Installable ASK languages appear to be plugins for key mapping/dictionary pairs, while Android’s installed languages menu brings up a set of all installed on-screen keyboard programs. ASK’s definition is the better descriptor, but a multilingual end-user who only cares that things work will accept Google’s definition before something more descriptive like “keyboards.”

Special thanks to muneyotxi for showing patience while educating me about ASK’s less obvious features – namely long-pressing the Return key for a faster access to keyboard app switching.

Final Question

AnySoftKeyboard is an almost trivial tweak to Android I would recommend for anyone thinking about digital privacy. What other raw beginner level tips do you have to share?

I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server.